Spin dynamics of hopping electrons in quantum wires: Algebraic decay and noise

Abstract

We study theoretically spin decoherence and intrinsic spin noise in semiconductor quantum wires caused by an interplay of electron hopping between the localized states and the hyperfine interaction of electron and nuclear spins. At a sufficiently low density of localization sites the hopping rates have an exponentially broad distribution. It allows the description of the spin dynamics in terms of closely-situated "pairs" of sites and single "reaching" states, from which the series of hops result in the electron localized inside a "pair". The developed analytical model and numerical simulations demonstrate disorder-dependent algebraic tails in the spin decay and power-law singularity-like features in the low-frequency part of the spin noise spectrum.